1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laminated ceramic electronic component, in particular, a laminated ceramic electronic component, such as a laminated ceramic capacitor, including a laminate including a plurality of ceramic dielectric layers, for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
A laminated ceramic electronic component includes a laminate including a plurality of ceramic dielectric layers and a plurality of internal electrodes disposed alternately on one another; and external electrodes formed at both end portions of the laminate. When mounting this laminated ceramic electronic component on a circuit board, the mounting surface of the circuit board and the surface direction of each of the internal electrodes may be disposed in parallel with each other or orthogonal to each other, depending on a direction of mounting of the laminated ceramic electronic component. In the case of a laminated ceramic capacitor, which is one of such laminated ceramic electronic components, such a positional relationship between the mounting surface of the circuit board and the internal electrode may cause fluctuation of a value of stray capacitance in the laminated ceramic electronic component, with the result that properties of the laminated ceramic electronic component may be negatively affected.
Hence, if the positional relationship between the mounting surface of the circuit board and the surface direction of the internal electrode is the same when mounting the laminated ceramic electronic component on the mounting surface of the circuit board, the variation of properties of the laminated ceramic electronic component can be made small. However, when the laminated ceramic electronic component has a square cross section, it is difficult to find the surface direction of the internal electrode from its appearance. To address this, during manufacturing of the laminated ceramic electronic component, a mark indicating the lamination direction in the laminate is formed on the outer surface of the laminated ceramic electronic component, thereby indicating the surface direction of the internal electrode of the laminated ceramic electronic component. Accordingly, the laminated ceramic electronic component can be mounted on the circuit board while the positional relation between the mounting surface of the circuit board and the surface direction of the internal electrode is maintained to be the same.
During the manufacturing of the laminated ceramic electronic component, the mark is formed in the following manner, for example. That is, on a surface of a dielectric having not been fired yet, an indication mark is formed using a ceramic paste. Then, the dielectric and the indication mark are simultaneously sintered together, thereby obtaining the dielectric having the indication mark. Because the indication mark has been sintered together with the dielectric, the indication mark is never erased or never becomes unclear unlike a conventional indication mark (see Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 57-72313).
However, for example, in order to form such an indication mark on each of small laminated ceramic electronic components with a length of 1.0 mm×a width of 0.6 mm×a thickness of 0.6 mm, for example, extra steps such as printing and drying are required and positional displacement or the like takes place during the printing. Accordingly, the manufacturing thereof becomes very complicated.